1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a population alert system for sending alert messages to users staying at a specific geographical location. More specifically, the invention describes a method and a system for efficiently locating and sending messages to mobile phones located within a specific area, without overloading the network, and independent of any user preferences.
2. Related Art
Today people are exposed to more threats than for just a few decades ago, and at the same time efficient existing methods for alerting people are based on old technology used for alerting of war related scenarios like bomb and missile attack. This is not considered to be usable for methodical alert for emergency situations related to unpredictable weather conditions due to climatic changes, increased transportation through dense populated areas, industry located close to populated areas, infrastructure breakdown, and increased risk for terrorism.
New and efficient methods for alerting and protecting people is therefore a highly focused area within the EU and US, but also in Asian countries which are often exposed to natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes. Billions of Euros have been spent in developing systems and methods to detect and predict in advance different kinds of natural and man made hazards (e.g. Global Monitoring Environmental Security (GMES) program). A predictive monitoring system has less or no value if it is not capable of alerting people exposed to the danger. Finding new and more efficient methods for alerting people is therefore a highly focused topic.
A complete population alert system must make use of multiple channels for distribution of alert messages, but the capability to alert mobile users is regarded to be the most important and critical feature.